Returning triumphant from their mission in Washington, Komodo accidentally lets a big secret slip to Hardball. Trauma, meanwhile, meets the special tutor the Initiative recruited to help him get a handle on his powers. The tutor is probably the most logical person in the Marvel Universe for the job, and hopefully will be at least a semi-regular part of the cast. Of all the Initiative kids, Trauma is definitely the one I find the most interesting.

But this is really Komodo’s issue. Having proven herself in the field, the top brass gives her a new assignment – help them subdue the fugitive Spider-Man. It’s a little hard to accept that they would give a job this important to such a greenhorn (no pun intended), but once you get past that, the story is quite effective. Slott carries over a plot device from his own She-Hulk for use in the story, which again is the logical way this would play out in a shared universe, and we even discover that the Initiative has a contingency plan in place to fill the void once they take Spider-Man down.

Hardball gets an interesting scene in here as well, where we actually get to see the reaction of the Stamford community to having the Initiative training camp in their backyard. That’s one of the big strengths in fact – Slott is using the book to bring some unity to the various sections of the Marvel Universe and carrying the assorted plot threads to their logical conclusions.

What’s also astonishing to me is how much has already happened in this book. We’ve introduced an entire cast, had the requisite early death to show how difficult the program is, fended off a full-scale invasion by Hydra, shown several training sequences and now launched one of our characters on their own storyline, all in just three issues. This book is the answer to decompression. If there’s anything that we haven’t seen that I want, I can sum it up in two words: more Slapstick!

Stefano Gaudiano’s art still works for me. I like his designs for the newbies, his fight scenes work well, and the sequence of Komodo and War Machine racing through New York is particularly good.

By the third issue, this is definitely one of the best books in Marvel’s stable.